


ain't it a gentle sound

by ladyofrosefire



Category: L.A. By Night (Web Series)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 07:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20004517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofrosefire/pseuds/ladyofrosefire
Summary: Eva and Jasper need a few moments of peace. Set between "Blood Divides" and the season finale.





	ain't it a gentle sound

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Damoselmaledisant for beta-reading. 
> 
> Title from "NFWMB" by Hozier.

There has been so little time, lately. With Scourges, Victor, getting strung up on the Hollywood sign like a piece of prosciutto. There are vengeance quests and Valkyries and Annabelle fucking off to deal with her business, which is… fine. Jasper understands how important it is to be the person to deal with one’s own shit. Getting other people involved is a good way to get oneself killed. 

But. Then there’s. This. 

He returns to the Labyrinth with Eva, where it’s safer, hopefully. She feeds, and they go home. To his home, his library, his Haven. The thirst gnaws at him less here. He’s doing alright, anyway, but his shoulders drop as the Beast gets a little quieter. A little more of his focus goes free for everything else, and he turns to Eva. She remains drawn in on herself, hood pulled up, eyes darting from corner to corner, hands wrapped around her elbows. 

She isn’t okay. He doesn’t think she’s been okay for a while. Certainly not since she killed Rodrigo. 

“Eva…” he pauses. The rest of that breath slowly rattles out of him in a sound too rough to be anything other than a growl. 

Those noises have stopped bothering him. They’re even useful half the time. Still, though. It would be nice if he knew how to ask. With words failing him, he edges back into Eva's space, bends his jagged lines around her so she won’t feel caged, hopefully, and offers her his hands. She bypasses them in favor of stepping back into his arms. It has stopped surprising him, mostly. Mostly. He ignores the ache in his chest. It would be easier if it were just from the stake. 

Kindred do not tremble naturally. They don’t have functioning adrenal glands anymore. But sometimes they forget, and their bodies remember an older instinct, and they shake. Eva shudders in his arms. 

Jasper makes the kind of concerned noise that comes out of Annabelle much more easily than it does him. What would she do if she were in this position? Probably start crying everywhere and ruin Eva’s sweater. It’s a nice sweater. Soft. He begins to rub her back, careful to keep his nails from catching in the knit. They’re still torn up from the fight and have flecks of Rodrigo’s blood under them. Shit. He checks to make sure none of it has come off on all of Eva’s snowy white. But it’s dry, so she’s fine, for now. 

Then he catches her peering up at him. Glancing away does nothing. They both know he knows she was looking and that he was thinking about _something._ Ridiculous.

He sighs and holds up his bloody fingers for inspection. “I should wash my hands. That’s a nice… I don’t want to mess it up.”

Eva nods and slips out of his hold. And even though she’s not warm, neither of them are warm, he feels the loss of her. But. Blood on his hands, and all. The literal kind. 

“Do you want…? I’m just going— I understand if you don’t want to be alone right now.”

She glances toward the carpet, and then toward him, an eyebrow lifting. Her hands twist together. And she follows when he goes for water. There’s only enough Vitae under his nails to tint the water, but he can feel more of it on his skin. He looks at his hoodie, and the hole punched through its chest, and at Eva. 

“I don’t mind,” she assures him. 

Jasper growls again. He does that a lot around her, he feels. Or maybe he’s just more aware of it. But he takes her word for it. Slowly, he unzips the hoodie and shrugs it off. Already, he misses the shelter of his hood. As he peels off his t-shirt, his chest twinges. He closed that wound. It’s still ugly—his chest, that is, and the rest of him. Black lines like cracks, like creeping. And layered over all of it, barely-sealed scrapes and cuts. 

Eva sucks in a breath. Kindred stop doing that, too, the oldest of them. But the habit stays long after the reflex has gone. She reaches out to him, and Jasper flinches. Her hand stops an inch from his side. 

“Sorry. It’s. I don’t. My skin is not pleasant to touch.”

So she lets him handle it himself, wash away the dried Vitae, snarl his way through getting some stray bit of grit out of a cut. He braces his hands on the edge of the sink for a moment afterward and pretends that breathing helps. At least it doesn’t feel like torpor. 

Eva is still hugging herself. 

“Are you—” it’s a stupid question. Kindred don’t feel the cold. “Do you… what can I do? To help?”

She looks at the mottled place, vivid even amongst the tracery of black veins, and raises a brow again. “Jasper…”

“I’m serious. You— you don’t seem. Okay. And I’m no use in a fight right now, so I can’t offer to rip the head off what’s scaring you—”

“— _No_!” The near violence of her response makes him start. “No, Jasper. Don’t. Please, don’t. You will… I’ve had enough of losing you.”

The promise she made him still rings in his head. Nothing tells him what to say, how he can make her feel any less like the world is falling to pieces. He cannot promise not to scare her, or not to get hurt, or not to put himself in danger again. Because if Annabelle takes that hurt… But he thinks about it. He thinks about finding Eva still, near to the final death, and the need to _rip into_ whatever would do that to her actually drowns out the snarl of the Beast for a moment. Jasper holds his hand out to her, and she takes it. If the texture bothers her, she has never shown a sign. They hold onto each other for a long moment before he tilts his head toward the door. 

“Let me put a shirt on. I… had a thought.”

“Oh?” He doesn’t release her hand, and Eva follows him through to— “Is this your room?”

“It is.” It’s neat. He’s always very neat in this space, and he finds himself more grateful for that than usual. 

Jasper lets her look around while he goes to the closet. He has mostly sweatshirts, hoodies, t-shirts. Things where if something happens to them, it’s mostly okay. Clothes that are easy to take off when one’s whole body is nothing but a scraped, raw, battered nerve. But he has a few sweaters, still. He finds one, the softest one, that he never wears outside the Labyrinth so he won’t have to replace it, and pulls it over his head. 

“Jasper,” Eva comes up behind him. “This is…”

“It’s nothing.”

She hums. “If you insist.”

He turns to find her smiling at him in that particular way she has when he absolutely has not gotten anything past her. His heart does not beat faster, and he does not have to catch his breath. If he were living— but he can do the part that matters.

“One moment,” he rasps, reaching up to bring the blanket down from the top shelf. 

It stays in a zippered plastic bag constantly, since it’s not like he _needs_ it. But he has it. It’s— it feels nice. He isn’t entirely practical all the time, or he would have stopped running with these people a long time ago. The blanket is a deep, dark blue and thick and softer than the sweater. He wraps it around Eva’s shoulders so that it trails like a cape. Slowly, Eva runs her fingers over it. Then she stretches up on tiptoes and draws him down until she can brush her lips against his. She leads him, this time, back to his bed. Slow and careful, Jasper lies down, head on his pillow, body arranged carefully along one side until Eva tugs at his hand. Then she settles in beside him, curled into his chest, legs tangled. It cannot, he thinks, be comfortable. He has always been bony, but the Embrace has left him a creature of angles. Jasper forms himself around her, wraps his long arms carefully around her frame, tucks her head beneath his chin. And at once, his sharp edges turn, sheathe and blunt.

Eva does not sigh because they do not breathe, they get no relief from such a thing. But the stiffness leaves her. And Jasper… tries to follow suit. A minute passes before Eva shifts in his arms. But not to pull away. She untucks the blanket and curls it around him, as well, like a wing. 

“Jasper,” she whispers into his collar. “I’m alright. You can relax.”

He turns his head so that his cheek brushes against her hair. “Are you? Really?”

“As long as you’re here, neither of us…” she pauses. “Yes. Right now, I am. Relax, please.”

As long as he has his arms around her, he knows she is still whole. Maybe she is not safe, he certainly is not. But for now. They lie cocooned in a pocket of time, tucked away beneath the city, in a place they call Haven. It cannot, and it will not last. But for now, they rest.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I'm on Tumblr at Ask-Ladyofrosefire. 
> 
> The author thrives on comments. 🖤🖤🖤

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] ain't it a gentle sound by ladyofrosefire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24182074) by [CompassRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CompassRose/pseuds/CompassRose)




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